Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Bright Desire: Smart Porn for Women and Men

Hi all! I recently had the pleasure of reviewing a XXX website - my very first review of this sort, and many thanks to Ms. Naughty for the opportunity! Ms. Naughty's new site is Bright Desire a porn site that describes itself as "new wave" - which I take to be a variant of what can only be described as a movement in porn. Call it queer, call it ethical, call it feminist, call it "post porn" -- clearly, porn consumers are asking for something different from mainstream fare, yet also not soft focus, not necessarily traditionally plot-driven, and (critically, in my opinion) not simply standard, mainstream porn packaged as "for couples." (Might I also add that it thrilled me to see "quality erotic fiction" listed on the welcome page?)

Lovely Adrianna Nicole in "Phone Sex"

Ms. Naughty describes her site in these terms:

This site offers a new and different kind of porn – new wave, smart
porn. The aim is to move beyond the old cliches, boundaries and
negativity of standard, old-style pornography and to offer something
fresh, inclusive and intelligent.

Bright Desire is a celebration of sex. It’s a deliberate attempt
to show all the good stuff that we love about sex – intimacy,
laughter, connection and real pleasure. It’s also about enhancing and
exploring fantasy – because our brains are just as important to our
sex lives as our genitals. I want to make 'thinking porn' – erotic
material that engages your mind as well as your heart and your libido.
I also want to create 'grateful porn', sexy videos that inspire joy
and happiness.

"Who's Been a Bad Girl?"

Sounds awesome to me. And honestly, it is.There is a real diversity here that offers a little bit of everything, but it all feels fresh. So, I guess if you are committed to a certain aesthetic currently provided by mainstream output you might not be interested. However, in my experience there are constantly people who watch mainstream output, and enjoy it, yet are open about settling for things that they could do without. A lot of the time, from "regular" porn fans, I hear a desire for less fakeness, less focus on hard&fast, or, if they like hard&fast to have it be more organic. I think that's the word for it: organic. At least, that's what I look for, whether it's a Hollywood-esque XXX feature film from the 70s, or a Penthouse Letter, I want to feel a fluidity, an organic quality to that product. A product that doesn't seem to be adhering to a stale, predictable mould. I felt like I got that at Bright Desire.

Ms. Naughty explains in her blog post about the site launch, "Bright Desire currently features scenes with real life heterosexual
couples as well as male and female solo masturbation scenes. I’m going
to expand this as I go along and include all orientations and genders,
although I do want to focus on hetero sex because that’s where I’m
personally at. And it’s also an area that’s still neglected, despite the explosion of
queer and feminist porn. Straight sex is still stuck in the realm of
porny cliche and I want to go beyond that." She goes on to explain, "I’ve taken a risk by including male solo scenes amid the couples and
solo women. Porn dogma insists that this sort of content should be
segregated, labelled as 'gay' and kept safely away from straight men
lest they somehow 'catch the gay' or turn into zombies or something like
that. I’m not buying into that." I don't buy into that either. The inclusion of male solo scenes is a pleasing deviation from the typical refusal to focus on the male body as sexually desirable. Whenever this happens, it's called "gay" even when there is no male-male contact. This is rather telling of who we presume to be doing the gazing...

"Fucking is the Only Prayer"

The categories available are: Movies, Stories, Reviews, and Columns. You can also add content to your "Likes" page making it simple to access your favourites. The movies are divided into a few sub-sections: Couples, Solo Men, Solo Women, Extended Scenes, Short Films, Extras, Interviews, and Film Festival, but they have many more tags to click on besides, including animation, BDSM, real life couples, pegging, and more. (I *love* the fact they have a tag for "laughter" - there really needs to be more laughter and joy in sex media). This gives a pretty good idea of the range of content available on the site, as well as the degree to which Bright Desire presumes you to be interested in the erotic arts in general; a presumption I find to be gratifying.

At the moment, Ms. Naughty is still adding content (it is brand spanking new), but from the looks of it the site is going to be really exciting and dynamic. I'm excited to see where it goes. Recommended.